Wizardly intelligence

[Esthanya]

So, the discussion got dropped about a year ago, (and with the new furor over the books because the new excerpts Yay!) I thought it was time to re-open the question.

We know from the feline wizard books that dogs, cats, lizards, and birds of prey have wizardry.
We concluded in the last thread that anything with intellegence or the ability to communicate might possibly have wizards. What are we defining as communication and intellegence? Could there be applience wizards, like the fridge? Or is it limited to things with life? Then what do we define life as?

[Wilf]

The most important feature of anything alive is that it has the ability to reproduce. To be able to communicate implies that you have to have osm emenas of communicating. This gnerally menas being able to make sounds ('talk'), or make shapes with you body (like sign language). This places certain restrictions on what animals qualify. Certainly all mammels and birds can make sounds. Of the amphibians, the toads the frogs would qualify, but not the newts. Reptiles... not sure. How many can make noises?
Non-alive objects... the only things I can think of that can communicate as outlined above are computers, and audio-visual euipment such as TVs or hifis. There's an interesting thought: a wizarding TV?

[Esthanya]

Ah, but we know that the trees "communicate" with Nita and Kit. I assume they don't have wizardry, because then they probably wouldn't have needed Nita and Kit to work on the truce in <i>A Wizard Abroad</i>. But it might have been that they needed impartal third parties for the negociations. Nevertheless, the trees and rocks "communicate" without sounds or sign language.

[Majutsukai]

Well, in order for a species to have wizards, they have to be sentient. I'm not really sure of all this implies, but I think it means partly that they're self-aware. I'll probably have to look it up.